I’m stewing a little bit about the concept of magical realism being different from the extraordinary. I’m not sure how exactly to couch it, and stating “I know it when I see it” won’t do.

There is a clear distinction between the magical and the ordinary, with regards to poetry and everyday life. However, in between lies a space, more difficult to categorize, but which I will call the “extraordinary.” The overuse of the word “extraordinary” has led to a diminution of meaning—how could it not, when somewhere on Madison Ave., a slick-suited advertising executive hopes to convince you that the power of Brand X cleaning solution is “extraordinary,” when it is, in fact, just a hair above “good”? If one is to carve out space for the “extraordinary narrative” as an element of craft, then a proper definition is in order.

We can quite clearly define the ordinary as within the realm of common, or everyday, experience. A poem with an “ordinary” narrative is one where the reader is introduced to a seemingly innocuous scene, made noteworthy either by the intensity of the language, the intensity of the speaker’s insight into the significance of the event, or both. Likewise, a narrative inexplicable by rational means, a poem whose chain of events gleefully defies scientific explanation, can be considered magical in nature.

A Handbook to Literature, Sixth Edition allows for the intersection of the two by defining magical realism as “a worldwide twentieth century tendency… the frame or surface of the work may be conventionally realistic but contrasting elements—such as the supernatural, myth, dream, fantasy—invade the realism and change the whole basis of the art” (304). However, the definition is necessarily limited by the need for the frame to be conventionally realistic, and so excludes narratives that make no attempt to frame themselves as realistic, but rather explore one or more of the listed contrasting elements within the context of reality. These narratives are left between pure fantasy and the simple ordinary—they are narratives that venture into the extraordinary.

These are the narrative poems that I’m looking for right now.

If you have been in need of a reason to depair over the culture of poetry blogs in America, here is one. In years to come webby winner after webby winner will be forgotten with their galleries of pithy quotes and Flickr photos. And we wll be the generation that neglected Little Fury, and our loss will be our embarrassment.

– James T. Kirk the cat, after Brian Phillips

I admit to deep-linking. These two poems (scroll down) were found in Octopus Magazine #7.